Brooks Jeffrey marketing in Mountain Home, Arkansas, which hosted many of the sites targeted by anonymous. Photograph: Frank Wallis/APGroup of hackers known anonymous which says it has hacked into some 70 mainly rural law enforcement Web sites in the United States, a data breach that at least a local police chief said the leaked sensitive information about an ongoing investigation.
The loose wrists hacking collective international posted a data cache to the Internet early on Saturday, including e-mails stolen from officers, tips, seemed to come from members of the public, credit card numbers and other information.
Anonymous said it had stolen 10 gigabytes worth of data in retaliation for the arrests of its sympathizers in the United States and United Kingdom.
Tim Mayfield, a police chief in Gassville, Arkansas, told the Associated Press, some of the material posted online – including images of teenage girls in swimsuits – were sent to him as part of an ongoing investigation. He declined to give more details.
Mayfields remarks were the first indication that hack can be serious. Since the news of a kind of cyber-attacks filtered only from less than a week ago, said various police officials they were unaware that hack or dismissed it as nothing to worry about.
Although many of the leaked e-mails appeared benign, made some of the stolen material sensitive information, including tips about suspected crimes, profiles rockers and safety training.
Emails were mainly from the Sheriffs offices in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Mississippi. Many of the sites, which were driven by a media services hosting company located in Mountain Home, Arkansas, and most, if not all, were either not available on Saturday or had been wiped clean of content. The company, Brooks Jeffrey marketing, refused to comment on.
Anonymous said in a statement it had leaked "a massive amount of confidential information, there is sure to [skandalisere], discredit and accuse police officers across the United States". The group said it hoped revelations would "demonstrate inherently corrupt nature of law enforcement by using their own words," and "interfering with and sabotaging their ability to communicate and terrorise communities".
The Group did not say specifically why these Sheriffs departments was targeted, but anonymous members increasingly have been perpetrated by law enforcement United States and in other places following a string of high-profile data thefts and Denial of service attack – operations, block websites by flooding them with traffic.
Last month, the FBI and Dutch and British officials made 21 arrests, many of them related to the Group's attacks on internet payment provider PayPal, which was targeted over its refusal to process the donations to WikiLeaks. Anonymous also claims credit for disrupting the sites of Visa and MasterCard in December when the credit card companies stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.
Internet security experts said anonymous may gone after Sheriffs offices, because the hosting company was an easy target. Dick Mackey, Vice-President of consulting on SystemExperts in Sudbury, Massachusetts, said many organisations could not see themselves as potential targets for international hackers, causing the indifference that could leave them vulnerable.
"It seems to me to be the low-hanging fruit," he said. "If you want to go after a person, and a comment and will have their defence be low, go for a person who does not consider itself a goal."
As part of the information posted from U.S. Sheriffs departments, leaked anonymous five credit card numbers it said it needed to make the "involuntary donations." At least four of the names and other personal information made public appeared genuine, even if they are contacted by the Associated Press said they did not know whether their financial information had been compromised.
Anonymous posted also several e-mails from police tips institutions, many of whom had asked law enforcement not to use their names for fear of reprisals. A tipster wrote that his uncle was a convicted sexual offender, who was homeless and hanging around a Miniclip Game-Paintball and other places where children were. Another tipster wrote to the police that she and her neighbors could smell drugs comes from a House. Neither responded to e-mails requesting comment.
Most calls to more than two dozen interested Sheriffs offices went unanswered or were not returned on Saturday. Several confirmed that a cyber-attack had taken place, and some said they do not trøde very sensitive information had been leaked.
"At this point, other than emails ... There isn't really any other critical information, they could get their hands on," said John Montgomery, Sheriff in Baxter County in Northern Arkansas.
St Francis County sheriff, Bobby may, said in Arkansas, his Department and several others had been targeted in retaliation for the arrests of hackers who had targeted the Apple Computer, among other companies.
An iPhone comes in handy at St Pancras International. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the guardian
